Microsoft CEO Talks Smack, Says Company Ready to Take on Apple

So much for thinking that Apple and Microsoft might live in peace and harmony into their twilight years. A new interview with CEO Steve Ballmer goes on the attack against Apple, with claims that Redmond will not cede any ground to Cupertino.

Chatting about the company's upcoming Surface tablet, Ballmer makes it clear that Microsoft does not plan to sit back and let Apple have all the fun when it comes to that market.

"We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple," Ballmer stated shortly after addressing 16,000 of its partners at the company's annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto on Monday. "We are not. No space uncovered that is Apple’s.

“We have our advantages in productivity,” he continued. “We have our advantages in terms of enterprise management, manageability. We have got our advantages in terms of when you plug into server infrastructure in the enterprise.

"But we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested to Apple]," an excited Ballmer shouted. "Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.

"We do feel empowered to innovate everywhere and bring our partners with us," the executive concluded. "We are just not going to leave any -- what’s the expression people like to use -- We’re not going to leave any stone unturned, so to speak, as we pursue that."

Apparently, that could even include a Microsoft-branded smartphone, although the CEO stopped short of confirming such a possibility, instead recanting his enthusiasm for Surface, which is the company's primary focus for now.

Comments

They only advantages they're missing are in style and consumer appeal. What Ballmer neglects here is that most companies AREN'T buying iPads. The consumers are buying them and then expecting the enterprise to support their personal devices, which they are. People don't want a tablet computer (those faded away in the 90's). They want iPads. Microsoft is now run by sales people and not engineers. It's no wonder that they're just trying to repackage and resell the same OS they've been selling for years. That's what sales people do. Unless they can convince businesses to buy these instead of laptops, this will be another Zune destined for the technical dustbin.

and we have our advantage in willing to pump billions and billions of dollars into any market we want to stay in. why, just look at the 8 billion we've lost in our web services, 10 years now and never a nickel in profit. and xbox! boy, did we show them our commitment on that one! by the time we had a profitable quarter we'd lost enough money that we could have built our very own international space station! we mean business! nobody, but NOBODY, can play moneyball like we play moneyball!